Author

Photo by Robert Caldarone

Keli is the author of two books, and a contributing essayist to a third.

In 2008 she published Party Crashing: How the Hip-Hop Generation Declared Political Independence (Basic Books, 2008.) The book is one of the first to examine “Generation Obama,” the generation of multi-cultural Americans that followed the Civil Rights Generation. Armed with landmark polling research co-authored by Keli and The Suffolk University Political Research Center, Party Crashing analyzed the political impact of generational differences between African Americans. For Party Crashing Keli conducted interviews with former Secretary of State Colin Powell, Russell Simmons, Julian Bond and young African American voters from diverse ethnic and political backgrounds.

Party Crashing was positively reviewed by The Washington Post, Publisher’s Weekly and Library Journal and was also the subject of extensive media coverage in outlets such as Vanity Fair, Politico, and New York Magazine.

Goff contributed an essay to the critically acclaimed book The Speech: Race and Barack Obama’s a More Perfect Union (Bloomsbury, 2009) which examined the cultural impact of then Senator Barack Obama’s watershed speech on race relations during the 2008 presidential campaign.

In 2011, Goff published her first novel, The GQ Candidate (Atria Books, 2011) which was one of the first fiction books to depict a political campaign through the eyes of the friends of a candidate, as opposed to the candidate or his handlers. The GQ Candidate received coverage in USA Today and was a recommended summer selection of More Magazine and The Los Angeles Times.

To learn more about Keli's books please click on the cover.

"In recent years, and especially in the election of 2008, Keli Goff brought skill and grace to the rough-and-tumble arena of political commentary. Now, in time for 2012, she has aimed those same talents at fiction, and the result is a witty novel that reminds us that all politics is personal."

–Arianna Huffington

"[A] fresh political page-turner…If you love government affairs laced with swaggering scandal and an intense competitive race to the finish line, The GQ Candidate is a must-read."

–Victoria Rowell

Buy Now:

“[The Speech] offers answers that are a lot more complex than the unvarnished praise Obama's oration has gotten so far…A rich landscape of opinion on the state of race and Obama's singular relationship to it. Last year, we simply couldn't see these arguments in the heat of the campaign; now they're coming into focus.”

–Los Angeles Times

Buy Now:

“Make room soccer moms and NASCAR dads, young black voters have emerged as the new wildcard in American politics. You will not find a better explanation for why and how than Party Crashing. Should be on the nightstand of candidates on either side of the political aisle.”

–Arianna Huffington, co-founder and Editor in Chief of The Huffington Post

"Keli Goff gets it right in this incisive and entertaining book, which comes at a fascinating moment in black political life. Party Crashing will get people talking."

–Henry Louis Gates, Director of the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research, Harvard University